psych questions

CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES

Building Literacy Instruction From Children’s Sociocultural Worlds

Victoria Purcell-Gates,1 Gigliana Melzi,2 Behnosh Najafi,3

and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana 4

1 University of British Columbia,

2 New York University,

3 Society for Research in Child Development

Fellow (2006–2008) and Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation ⁄ ACF ⁄ DHHS, and 4University of California

ABSTRACT—This article demonstrates that children’s lan-

guage and literacy development shares an inextricable

relationship with their social and cultural worlds. Cultural

factors always shape the ways different communities

engage in reading and writing. Young English language

learners bring culturally shaped beliefs and experiences

regarding reading and writing to school, where they are

taught important beginning literacy skills and practices

that may not fit with their previous experiences. This arti-

cle calls for carefully designed research that explores

promising curricular modifications that may increase the

early literacy abilities of children from cultural and lin-

guistic backgrounds different from mainstream educa-

tional environments.

KEYWORDS—young multilingual learners; young multi-

cultural learners; culturally responsive early literacy

instruction

Literacy involves the ability to read, write, and engage with text

in ways that mediate cultural lives. Unfortunately, literacy

research and practice often fail to consider the cultural aspects

of how and why people in different cultural and linguistic com-

munities engage with written texts, including social interactions

around such practices. In this article, we draw from research

across multiple disciplines to demonstrate the central argument

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Victoria Purcell-Gates, Department of Language and Literacy, Fac- ulty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, 304 B Scarfe Hall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4; e-mail: [email protected].

ª 2011 The Authors Child Development Perspectives ª 2011 The Society for Research in Child Development

Volume 5, Number

that language and literacy practices are profoundly sociocultural

in nature. In addition, we present research suggesting that young

children begin their formal education as skilled participants in

dynamic language and literacy practices embedded in their

homes and cultural communities. We introduce preliminary evi-

dence suggesting the effectiveness of early instruction that

bridges the language and literacy skills young children bring

from home with those they are taught in formal early child care

environments.

In writing about cultural aspects of children’s learning, we do

not espouse an essentialized view of culture that leads to state-

ments, such as ‘‘Mexicans do X’’ or ‘‘Koreans do Y.’’ Nor do we

treat culture as ‘‘traits’’ of individuals. By culture, we mean pat-

terned ways of organizing everyday life (Pollock, 2008). The

patterns are dynamic and inherent in the practices of communi-

ties, shifting over time in response to changing conditions. As

children grow, their cultural resources expand as they encounter

different ways of being, doing, thinking, and acting—including

different ways of reading and writing. As we will argue, building

on existing cultural ways with words and print can greatly assist

children’s acquisition of new literacy behaviors and skills.

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY AS SOCIOCULTURAL

PRACTICE

Researchers have studied children’s routine participation in the

everyday contexts of their lives, including families, churches,

and schools (see Duff & Hornberger, 2008, for a review). They

have documented rich and varied language and literacy tradi-

tions that all children participate in, including children from lin-

guistic and cultural minorities who are often thought of as

deficient in language and literacy experiences. The research

shows that the language with which children are socialized to

become competent members of their community and competent

1, Pages 22–27

Building Literacy Instruction 23

users of their particular language is imbued with cultural

markers—general beliefs, values, and norms, as well as specific

beliefs and practices related to children’s development.

Ochs and Schieffelin (1982, 1984) provide an early account of

variation in the ways different communities view their children’s

participation in everyday conversations. These views are interwo-

ven with distinct ways of socialization and communicative prac-

tices. For example, in the Kaluli and Samoan communities,

children were expected to adjust to the social situations around

them (i.e., situation-centered approach). Parents oriented their

children outward to pay attention to other people and events hap-

pening around them, ‘‘positioning them as observers and

overhearers of recurrent social activities’’ (Ochs & Schieffelin,

2008, p. 5) and directly asking them to repeat the language

around them.

In other communities, social situations and conversational

practices are modified to the needs of the child (i.e., child-cen-

tered approach). Parents are likely to engage in conversations

with their children, adjusting the form and content of their lan-

guage to match children’s linguistic abilities (i.e., simplified

linguistic register). Ochs and Schieffelin’s (1982, 1984) findings,

however, challenged the popular notion that engaging infants in

conversations, especially in a simplified manner (i.e., child-direc-

ted speech), fostered children’s language development. They

demonstrated that engaging young children in such a manner was

not a necessary and universal condition for children’s proper lin-

guistic development; rather, it was a cultural practice. In sum, this

work, along with other studies, suggests that all language sociali-

zation practices yield the same results: Children become compe-

tent speakers of their languages in their respective communities.

Subsequent research has documented situation-centered

approaches to language socialization and development across

various cultural communities in the United States, such as West

Coast Mexican Americans (Eisenberg, 1985, 1986; Schieffelin &

Eisenberg, 1984; Valdés, 1996), New York Puerto Ricans

(Zentella, 1997), and East Coast Central American immigrants

(Melzi, 2000). These studies revealed that the children devel-

oped within rich linguistic environments, usually involving mul-

tiparty conversations. ‘‘Adults speak and act as they normally do,

and children must observe carefully in order to catch on and

catch up’’ (Zentella, 1997, p. 230). In one study, Mexican Ameri-

can mothers often introduced infants to conversations with dile

(tell him or her) and, as the infants were yet unable to produce

speech, the mother completed the turn (Eisenberg, 1986). As

children grew older, mothers’ participation in the conversation

decreased until they assumed a secondary role in their children’s

conversations (Eisenberg, 1985; Melzi, 2000).

Of course, patterns of child socialization and language prac-

tices are dynamic and change over time (Chavajay & Rogoff,

2002; Crago, Annahatak, & Ningiuruvik, 1993; Pels & de Haan,

2003, 2006) For example, in Moroccan society, there has tradi-

tionally been no separate sphere of childhood; children learn at

an early stage to assume adult responsibilities. By comparison,

Child Development Perspectives, V

Moroccan immigrant families in the Netherlands engage in more

child-focused activities, reflecting the shift in cultural contexts.

In addition, the tremendous importance tied to respect for

authority figures (including older siblings) that often manifests in

traditional Moroccan communicative norms (e.g., children wait-

ing to speak until their elders speak to them, children listening

and not interrupting authority figures) may sometimes give way

to forms of parent–child communication in which children are

seen more as equal communicative partners (Pels & de Haan,

2003).

Literacy engagement also reflects cultural variation (e.g.,

Britto, Brooks-Gunn, & Griffin, 2006; Miller, 1982; Reese &

Gallimore, 2000). Heath’s (1983) groundbreaking ethnographic

work across three racially and socioeconomically diverse com-

munities in North Carolina grounded our understanding of the

variation that exists in the use of literacy and how this use inter-

sects with the cultural expectations inherent in school practices.

Her results described how the values, expectations, and

practices surrounding literacy were different across the three

communities. In the White middle-class community (Maintown),

children were consumers and producers of print early on, being

read to and creating their own stories to share. In the White

working-class community (Roadville), children were immersed

in print from the time they were born through decorations,

games, and storybook reading for very practical and didactic pur-

poses. In the Black working-class community (Trackton), chil-

dren were not read to and were exposed to print only when the

situation called for it and print was available in the context (e.g.,

reading labels). However, language use in Trackton was more

holistic and dynamic (e.g., playful use of language in sophisti-

cated manners, such as creating analogies) than that of Road-

ville. Heath argued that Trackton children did not lack literacy

exposure; rather, the practices they encountered led to the devel-

opment of skills different from those expected to prepare them

for school success.

Subsequent research in other communities corroborates

Heath’s (1983) findings that shared family practices around print

materials will reflect different assumptions about the purposes of

literacy and of appropriate social interactions around it. For

example, in many middle-class European-heritage families, book

reading is a daily, structured routine for parents and children.

Parents ask questions that encourage children to participate in

the coconstruction of the story, to focus on the print, and to move

beyond the information presented in the book (Fletcher & Reese,

2005). In contrast, middle-class Peruvian mothers, who also

value reading with their children, prefer to be the sole narrator,

discouraging child participation (Melzi & Caspe, 2005). As the

expert story readers, they expect their children to learn to be

attentive and to learn through active listening (see also Fung,

Miller, & Lin, 2004) and to not interrupt the reader. Similar

book-reading routines exist among Mexican and Dominican

immigrant mothers living in New York City (Caspe, 2007).

Finally, in some communities, adult sharing of picture books

olume 5, Number 1, Pages 22–27

24 Victoria Purcell-Gates et al.

with children may not be a regular routine (Barrueco, López, &

Miles, 2007), but older children might read to younger siblings

as part of their work as family translators (Orellana, Reynolds,

Dorner, & Meza, 2003). In this way, they combine the cultural

norm emphasizing sibling caretaking with the cultural value their

new society places on storybook reading, and they provide expo-

sure to English print that might not always be accessible to their

predominantly Spanish-speaking parents (Reynolds & Orellana,

2008). The work of family translating—performed by even very

young bilingual children for their immigrant parents—also

exposes children to a wide variety of literacy practices and texts

(Orellana, 2001; Orellana et al., 2003).

In sum, whatever children learn about print before they begin

formal instruction is shaped by the literacy traditions in their

community (Purcell-Gates, 1989, 2000) as well as by the

demands of their daily lives. As children engage in reading and

writing routines, they begin to learn concepts about print and the

nature of the print-speech mapping that is used for written texts

(Purcell-Gates, 1989). Children take this knowledge with them

when they begin formal instruction in early education settings.

Unfortunately, we have yet to acknowledge and incorporate these

basic findings from the research literature into mainstream think-

ing and educational practices. Instead, absence of parent–child

book sharing is often interpreted as evidence of a low-literacy

home. The child is then often labeled as at risk for reading prob-

lems, despite the rich language and literacy traditions of families

where book reading may not be commonplace (Baquedano-López

& Kattan, 2008) or accomplished in nontraditional ways.

BRIDGING HOME AND SCHOOL LITERACY PRACTICES

Although researchers have been interested in home–school con-

nections with regard to literacy practices for some time, there

have been few systematic research studies on specific ways to

bridge home and formal literacy instruction for nonmainstream

groups. Responding to this gap, researchers have begun to

explore educational interventions (Hull & Schultz, 2002; Purcell-

Gates Degener, Jacobson, & Soler, 2002; Purcell-Gates, Duke, &

Martineau, 2007) and to call for more researches to determine the

impact of these interventions (Duke & Purcell-Gates, 2003; Pur-

cell-Gates, Jacobson, & Degener, 2004). Some approaches call

for ‘‘matching’’ home and school practices (e.g., Au, 1980). Others

argue for identifying points of leverage—ways in which school lit-

eracy can build on the literacy skills and knowledge that children

acquire from everyday interactions (Anderson, Purcell-Gates,

Gagne, & Jang, 2009; Lee, 1993). The ‘‘cultural modeling’’ tradi-

tion (Lee, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2007; Martı́nez, Orellana, Pacheco,

& Carbone, 2008; Orellana & Reynolds, 2008) has been deployed

with older students, but holds promise for young learners as well.

The basic premise involves the recruiting of cultural practices as

strengths, building from language and literacy used in the daily

lives of children to bridge their understanding of oral and

written conventions taught in formal educational environments.

Child Development Perspectives, V

Reflecting the theoretical underpinning that culture is

dynamic and that individuals can engage in multiple communities

of practice, we cannot determine literacy skills from children’s

ethnic or cultural category. Our understanding of children’s

literacy development must derive from a systematic attempt to

uncover the multiple and diverse language and literacy practices

familiar to individual children. For example, we can glean infor-

mation regarding children’s early literacy practices by asking

them who reads and writes what, as well as why they do so both

in their homes and community lives; sending questionnaires

home to the parents; conducting literacy practice focus groups of

parents; and visiting children’s homes. This approach acknowl-

edges the diversity of literacy practices that exists across

children within a given classroom or early child care program.

Approaches to instruction that connect informal skills to main-

stream lessons in early childhood settings may be especially

relevant for young children from homes where languages other

than English are spoken (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992).

These young children develop in contexts that can include lan-

guage and literacy conventions that differ from those in early

education settings, including different types of texts, orthogra-

phies, and purposes for reading and writing, as well as values

and beliefs regarding appropriate literacy practices in the home

and in school (Chatman, 1990; McCabe, Bailey, & Melzi, 2008).

To ground the reader’s understanding of how this type of instruc-

tion might occur in an early childhood setting, we present an

example from Purcell-Gates (2005) in which children’s familiar-

ity with sending greeting cards serves as a context for learning

how to read and write.

On the basis of her ethnographic work with a migrant commu-

nity in the United States, Purcell-Gates (2005) noted the literacy

practices of migrant farm workers and the experiences of their

children attending a Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program.

Results indicated that the farm workers engaged in more than

151 different types of literacy activities, but most did not read

storybooks to their children. One of the most common literacy

practices involved the sending and receiving of greeting cards

to celebrate important events (such as birthdays, graduations,

and weddings), reflecting the strong ties of family in these

communities.

On one occasion in the Head Start classroom during an arts

and crafts activity, the children were making birthday cards for a

teaching aide in the program. Each child received a folded

‘‘card’’ made of construction paper and their activity was to color

it and paste stars, stickers, and ⁄ or glitter onto it. The teacher would then write ‘‘Happy Birthday...’’ on the inside and the chil-

dren then were to ‘‘sign’’ their name in any way they could.

Whereas storybook routines in the classroom were seen as foster-

ing early literacy, this card-making event was supposed to be an

art activity and not a literacy activity. Acting as a teaching aide,

Purcell-Gates coached the young children to write names and

other texts on their individual birthday cards. The children’s

behaviors during the birthday card activity were in stark contrast

olume 5, Number 1, Pages 22–27

Building Literacy Instruction 25

to those they exhibited during storybook reading time, during

which they were largely inattentive or engaged in avoidance

activities. The children’s enthusiasm and joy in doing the birth-

day cards prompted the Head Start instructors to discuss with

Purcell-Gates how they might ‘‘teach’’ literacy skills in the con-

text of familiar literacy activities of the children.

However, the question still remains whether approaches that

ground literacy instruction in home- and community-based prac-

tices are more effective than traditional pedagogies. Although

there is a dearth of research studies that examine this question

(see August & Shanahan, 2006), findings from existing studies are

promising. For instance, the Literacy for Life Program (Anderson

et al., 2009) in British Columbia incorporated real-life literacy

activities into an intergenerational literacy program. The focus of

the program was to engage participants in reading and writing

real-life texts for real-life purposes to increase the English literacy

of the parents and the emergent English-literacy knowledge of

their preschool-aged children. The participants came from two

different program sites, one attended by African and Middle East-

ern refugees and the other by Asian immigrants. Participants

had low or no levels of English language skills and virtually no

English-literacy skills, as determined by norm-referenced assess-

ments of English language oral and written achievement. The

adults in the program learned English language and literacy skills

through activities, such as reading receipts to return merchandise,

completing health forms to prepare for doctor visits, and reading

school reports to learn how their children were progressing in

Canadian schools. The preschool children participated in devel-

opmentally appropriate activities while their teacher explicitly

focused them on the print that mediated the activities. For exam-

ple, they made play-dough with the teacher as she followed a rec-

ipe out loud; the teacher’s lesson focused on pointing out the print

in the recipe and explaining how recipes help people make things.

Results of pre- and posttest analysis showed statistically signifi-

cant growth as compared to the norm sample on various measures

of adult literacy (such as vocabulary, comprehension, and spell-

ing) and of children’s emergent literacy (including concepts of

print, letter name knowledge, vocabulary, and ‘‘meaning’’).

Further analysis showed that those who experienced more real-life

literacy activities in their classes had higher growth scores.

Findings from Purcell-Gates et al. (2007) suggest that real-

life literacy reading and writing in the classroom facilitate liter-

acy learning in the primary grades. Using an experimental

design, the study was to investigate the impact of explicit

instruction of two science written genre features with 420

second- and third-grade students on comprehension and compo-

sition of the genres. Both the experimental and control groups

incorporated real-life literacy activity into the science instruc-

tion. There were no significant experimental results. However,

the researchers did find significant relationships between expe-

rience with real-life reading and writing of science genres

and growth in reading comprehension and composition of the

genres.

Child Development Perspectives, V

The few evaluation studies that we have included here make

evident the need for additional research that examines the

impact of instruction that builds from the informal language and

literacy knowledge and skills of young children. We call for ran-

domized field trials, engaging immigrant and native-born

preschool and primary-grade English language learners that rep-

licate the Anderson et al. (2009) study for the experimental

groups (inclusion of literacy activities familiar to the children

from different cultural groups) for preschool and primary grade

children. These studies must examine the hypothesis that early

literacy skills, such as sound–symbol relationships, spelling, and

comprehension are enhanced by engagement in real-life literacy

activities as compared to instruction that does not include these

activities. The proposed research should include qualitative data

to provide a richer picture of how children from different lan-

guage and cultural groups take up specific educational interven-

tions. This type of research agenda should lead to promising

approaches for better meeting the literacy development needs of

young English language learners. Teacher preparation for such

instruction must include ways to learn the literacy practices of

their students’ communities.

In conclusion, young children’s language and literacy develop-

ment occurs as they participate in the routine ongoing practices

of their daily lives. Children take this knowledge with them when

they begin formal instruction. Starting from these rich and cul-

turally congruent foundations of literacy knowledge, educators

can build children’s understanding of more conventional forms

of literacy at school.

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